For a Right-Brain Learner Capitalize on Strengths

For a right-brain learner, that is a child who learns best when he or she sees and experiences information, we believe it is important to both know your child’s strengths and to capitalize on their strengths.

For most students with learning disabilities and ADHD, or attention issues, the tendency is to focus on phonics and medication

But as Betty Maxwell, from the Gifted Development center writes in this article on

“The possibility of vision deficits should be considered if an obviously advanced child is struggling with beginning reading skills. The field of behavioral optometry can help here. Young children are naturally far-sighted. The passions of gifted children—puzzles, identifying dinosaurs, Lego construction, etc.—often involve near-point work and visual stress.

A better way for these children is a personally meaningful Whole Word approach. Struggling visual-spatial learners do better learning sight words—a large number of sight words—before approaching phonics analytically. Because their feelings are strong, they most readily learn words that have personal meaning. The work of New Zealander SylviaAshton-Warner (1963), half a century ago, which she called “organic reading,” still holdsup in Whole Word teaching. She had each of her students choose words they were eager to learn, keep their words in a box, and do exhilarating things with them. These sight

vocabulariesgrew out of each child’s interests and feelings. They “owned” them and learned them readily. No effort was made to keep the words short or phonetically regular. What mattered was that the child wanted them.”

We agree that a hands-on approach that teaches the student how to improve their sight word vocabulary and pattern recognition skills is an excellent way to start. The vision training could help, if that is a problem.

As far as dealing with the attention issues, tools like the Interactive Metronome (R) and Brain Gym (R) can be used either without medication or in combination with ADHD medication to address the attention issue, if it exists.

We think the three critical questions to answer are:

– Is your child a right-brain learner who learns best when he or she sees and experiences information?

– Does your child have an eye teaming issue? This is a common challenge, but you first need to check to see if this problems exists

– Does your child have an attention issue?

Assuming all these conditions exist you want to consider:

– Hands-on visual training — a right-brain program for a right-brain learner

– Vision training

– Tools like the Interactive Metronome (R) and Brain Gym (R)

You also want to work with a professional or professionals who:

– Deal with more than one issue

– Will teach to your child’s interests

At 3D Learner, we do teach with a hands-on approach, screen for and address the eye-teaming and attention issues and we do teach to your child’s strengths

To get started, you may want to read Mira’s book, “Life is a Ball Do Not Put Me in a Box” and take our Success Assessment that assesses for a learning difference, an eye-teaming and attention challenges at 3D Learner